Energy loss of protons from MedAustron in silicon strip sensors

Abstract

MedAustron is a hadron synchrotron primarily designed and built for tumor treatment. Besides its clinical purpose, it is equipped with a dedicated beam line for non-clinical research. This beam line can be used for beam tests utilizing protons with an energy up to 252.7MeV at the moment, but 800MeV protons and carbon ions will become available through 2019. We conducted first beam tests at MedAustron in order to understand the usability of this beam line for testing silicon detectors. This includes the design and commissioning of a trigger setup based on scintillators and PMTs, which is meant to stay permanently there. This allowed us to measure energy deposition utilizing silicon strip sensors read out by the ALiBaVa system. Nominal beam energies were varied between 62.4 and 252.7MeV and verified by determining the specific energy loss of protons in silicon. As these energies are rather low compared to typical HEP beam tests, the proton beam through the setup was simulated to determine the necessary energy correction due to losses through matter and air in front of the Si sensor. These approaches yielded good agreement with reference data from NIST, so MedAustron is considered as a reliable facility for future beam tests.